Guardians: Chapter 12024.
Directed by: Brandon Vietti.
Featuring the voices of Kelly Hu, Katee Sackhoff, Adrienne Barbeau, Grey Griffin, Titus Welliver, Matthew Rhys, Troy Baker, Jeffrey Combs, Yuri Lowenthal, Kari Wahlgren, Phil LaMarr, Dwight Schultz, Geoff Pierson, Michael Cerveris, Corey Burton, Jason Spisak, John Marshall Jones, Rick D. Wasserman and Max Koch.
SUMMARY:
Warner Bros. Animation has debuted Guardians: Chapter 1a highly anticipated animated adaptation of the legendary comic book series by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The trailer released during San Diego Comic Con piqued a lot of people’s interest, and the short version of my review is: “It’s a very faithful, if somewhat rushed, adaptation of the source material.” Read on to read the long version.
Guardian Creator and writer Alan Moore has always insisted that his 12-issue comic book series cannot be adapted into a film because it uses the medium in a certain way to achieve its narrative goals. He’s not wrong, and I would recommend any fan of Zack Snyder’s 2009 film adaptation to read the series if they haven’t already, but I have no problem with someone tackling the material for an adaptation.
Snyder’s film was not perfect, but like Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of the Ringshe succeeds brilliantly in capturing the spirit of the source material. One of the most difficult parts of Guardian for the film is the inclusion of the Stories from the black freighter Comic story that acts as a kind of Greek chorus for the main plot.
The 215-minute Ultimate Cut of Snyder’s film, which I have always appreciated because I love the comic so much, contains Stories from the black freighter as a series of animated vignettes that cut to the child reading the comic while sitting next to a newsstand.
In contrast, this new Guardians: Chapter 1 Adaptation by Warner Bros. Animation presents Stories from the black freighter as comic panels on the screen, with a voice-over reading the text. The child is shown reading the comic, but this version also switches to other moments in the story as the text progresses, better emphasizing the connection between this story and the main plot.
My only criticism is the way Stories from the black freighter covered here concerns a few moments where several panels and their narrative captions are shown, but the action switches away too quickly to read them all. The other narrative captions then reappear in the next scene, but the “wait, I didn’t get a chance to read that – oh, now it’s reappearing” effect is a bit jarring.
By and large, it’s a very faithful adaptation of the comic, with an animation style that hews closely to artist Dave Gibbons’ much-appreciated depictions of the characters and the alternate 1985 timeline they find themselves in. Unlike the film, the movie begins like the comic, with the scene where the two detectives investigate the Comedian’s death, but like the film, many of Gibbons’ panels are re-enacted. And all of the characters sound like you’d probably expect.
My only other problem with Guardians: Chapter 1 is that the film only runs for 78 minutes before the credits, which makes the action seem rushed as it seems to race from one plot point to the next. There are not many moments where the viewer can catch his breath before moving on to the next part. Perhaps the inclusion of some excerpts from Under the hoodHollis Mason’s biography, which serves as the closing material for many issues of the comic series, could have been used for this purpose.
The story ends with Guardians: Chapter 2so I wonder if it will have the same relatively short runtime. If so, will we end up with an animated version of Guardian that’s about on par with Snyder’s theatrical cut of his live-action adaptation. This seems like a missed opportunity, as I would have thought that an animated adaptation of Guardian would have the luxury of fully exploring the story and its world.
Warner Bros. Animation sent me a preview of the digital release of Guardians: Chapter 1. A physical media edition will be released on August 27th and we will post an update with this review. Stay tuned.
Assessment of the flickering myth – Movies: ★★★★ / Movie: ★★★★
Brad Cook
